August 21, 1985

Lawyers who have sued the Union Carbide Corporation over the gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India, filed new multimillion-dollar damage suits yesterday against the company, this time on behalf of victims of the Aug. 11 gas leak at Carbide's similar facility in Institute, W. Va. The new suits, brought in state court in West Virginia and in Federal District Court in Manhattan, will have a major effect on the Bhopal case, the lawyers said. They said the new leak - which sent 135 people to the hospital - disclosed defects in design, operation and emergency response similar to the Dec. 3 accident in India, where 2,000 people died. ''Our position is that even though the plant is in India, the technology decisions were made here,'' said Stanley M. Chesley, a Cincinnati lawyer and a lead counsel in both the Bhopal and Institute actions. ''The accident at Institute shows that.''

A report in the Company Briefs column in Business Day yesterday about Manufactured Homes Inc. misstated the company's location. It is based in Winston-Salem, N.C., and has no affiliation with the company of the same name based in Marshall, Mich.

THE work shirt is an unfaded blue, and the jeans look suspiciously stiff. But the real tipoff that Miles Cahn is no ordinary farmer is his fine leather belt. Until last month, Mr. Cahn, who is 64, and his wife Lillian, 61, were Upper West Siders and co-owners of Coach Leatherware, the New York manufacturer whose Coach bag is a fashion standard. This month they are goat farmers. What the Cahns are setting out to do is to make top-quality natural goat cheese - ''We don't call it chevre,'' Mr. Cahn says. ''That sets my teeth on edge'' - that, they hope, will become as classic as their famous bag. And, they maintain, the two businesses have more in common than might be expected.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company said yesterday that it had agreed to buy the Century 21 Real Estate Corporation, the nation's largest real estate sales organization, from the Transworld Corporation. Executives of both companies and the First Boston Corporation, Transworld's investment adviser, declined to disclose the sales price. However, sources in the financial community said the amount was significantly above the $200 million minimum that Transworld set when it put Century 21 up for sale in May.

A leading Sikh political figure was shot and killed today by Sikh assailants in the Indian state of Punjab. The slaying of the political leader, Harchand Singh Longowal, who was president of the mainstream Sikh party, Akali Dal, came less than a month after he had signed an accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to end a three-year separatist crisis in Punjab in which thousands died. Only hours earlier, a Hindu politician of the governing Congress Party was slain in the Punjab city of Jullundur. Two other Congress members were wounded in the attack, which authorities said had been carried out by Sikhs.